UC Riverside

This dissertation presents three independent research projects.

The first chapter of this thesis studies the impact of gender composition of teams on employee productivity, using a randomized controlled trial. The study was conducted in Indian call centers located in five Indian cities. This is the first study to estimate the causal impact of opposite gender peers on performance in the workplace setting. For identification, call center employees were randomized into either mixed gender teams (30-50% female peers) or control groups of same gender teams. The study finds precisely estimated zero effects on both productivity (intensive margin) and share of days worked during the study period (extensive margin) of being assigned to a mixed gender team. There is evidence that conditional on being assigned to mixed gender teams,

men with progressive gender attitudes have higher productivity than men with

regressive gender attitude. There is an overall increase in the secondary outcomes of

knowledge sharing, dating and comfort with the opposite gender for male employees

in mixed gender teams, relative to all male teams.

The second chapter also uses the setting of Indian call center industry, and studies the impact of air pollution on productivity. Air pollution above the threshold 35.4 µg/m3 PM2.5 is viewed as harmful according to both WHO and EPA guidelines. The study finds that days on which pollution is above the threshold, average productivity decreases by 0.19 standard deviations. The study also finds evidence of efficiency loss on high pollution days.

The third chapter studies the effect of co-residence with parents-in-law on female labor force participation (FLFP) in India. Using two rounds of nationally representative panel data of women, death of healthy parent-in-law is taken as an exogenous shock to co-residence with parent-in-law. The paper provides evidence that death of a father-in-law leads to a 11.2 percentage point or 25% increase in FLFP. There is also an

increase in FLFP by 11 percentage points following the loss of a working mother-

in-law, providing evidence of an added worker effect in the household. On the secondary outcome of empowerment, death of mother-in-law increases women's empowerment by 16.7%.